


Summer night ghost stories

by misdre



Category: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Beyblade
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misdre/pseuds/misdre
Summary: Takao, Hiromi, Max, and Rei gather together one summer night to tell some scary stories - and Rei can't bring himself to admit how scared he actually is...





	Summer night ghost stories

Golden eyes fixed on the flickering flames that bore a strikingly similar colour to them, Rei stared at the set of five candles, placed in a circle in the middle of a larger circle made of humans – namely himself, Takao, Hiromi, and Max. The palm of his hand felt sticky against his fingers as he clenched his fist.

The others, who were in a much lighter mood than Rei, kept chatting away in a brisk manner around him. For the prelude of a ghost story session, the atmosphere sure was cheery on the Kinomiya dojo’s patio that night.

“So,” said Max, “what exactly makes July the best time for ghost stories, though? What makes it better than any other month?”

Takao cast him a look of skepticism, as if hardly believing his ears – that such level of ignorance could exist on this day and age! It was unfathomable to Takao. “What, you don’t _know?_ You been living under a rock all your life or what?”

“Well, in New York,” Max suggested; he turned up his freckled nose just slightly at Takao’s frantic response. No matter how you looked at it, New York was hardly ‘under a rock’ in comparison to this tiny rural town in Japan that they now resided in.

“It’s Obon, of course! Obon!”

“Late summer’s when this world and the spiritual world are the closest to each other,” added Hiromi, raising her hands in front of her as if pretending to be a ghost, “because of all the spirits visiting from afterlife. It’s a time when the dead mingle with the living!” Then, she suddenly turned to Rei on her left side. “Does China celebrate Obon too?”

“W-we call it the Ghost Festival, but the celebration is pretty much the same.”

It had been Takao’s idea, to gather at his house to share some spooky stories that night. Hiromi and Max, who both were apparently the kind to be excited rather than put at unease by all things occult, had been so charmed by the idea that Rei hadn’t had the courage to decline either; Rei considered (or at least wanted to consider) himself one of the more reasonable members of their team, and strived to be a reliable person with nerves of iron. It would have been absolutely shameful for him to admit that he was, in fact, scared of ghosts. He had always believed in ancestral spirits, and tales of malevolent ones simply horrified him, no matter how fantastical.

Rei wished he could have had an easy way out like the rest of the group – Professor, who was so loud about his fear of all things creepy that he had excused himself as soon as the topic had sprung up; Kai, who had taken his usual position outside the circle and now lay comfortably a couple of feet away from the rest, but obviously had all the intent to stay there and listen to every word anyway, without actually participating; and Daichi, who had fallen asleep an hour ago. After all, the sun had already set, and the candles now cast a dim light in the darkening dusk that had begun to wrap its long fingers around them.

This was a predicament that Rei had not prepared for. That alone made his forehead break out in a cold sweat.

“I’ll start!” Hiromi announced then, and took a flashlight out of her purse. This was a little unnecessary combined with the candles, but it seemed to act as some sort of spiritual baton to be passed on…

However, as Hiromi began her story, Rei got to breathe at least one sigh of relief in secret. Her story had more to do with the supernatural than spirits, a tale of someone repeatedly meeting a specific person in his dreams, until he one day meets that person in real life as well, but this person didn’t even recognize him. Well, perhaps it was a little ominous, in the end – Rei had heard stories of people predicting accidents in their dreams and such, and Hiromi’s story admittedly had a similar eerie ring to it. So although it wasn’t exactly scary while she was telling it, Rei still found himself a bit uneasy afterwards.

“’The hell was that lame-ass story?” barked Takao once Hiromi was finished, effectively ruining the mood. “That was such girly girl stuff. Where’s the ghost??”

“Well, the ghost of the person was visiting his dreams! You just don’t get it!”

“Like astral travelling?” said Max, who seemed plenty fascinated by this tale and not at all unsatisfied like Takao.

“Exactly! Good to know _someone_ here has class.”

“But the astral traveller forgot all about it once he woke up in the real world… It’s kind of sad.”

“Me next,” decided Takao and took the flashlight from Hiromi. “I’m gonna tell you an _actual_ ghost story. So tighten your seatbelts, kids.”

And as the mellow wind of the summer night rustled in the trees around the dojo, Takao began telling his tale. A tale about a boy who lived in a cabin in the woods alone with his grandfather, where no other people ever came, except one – someone whose silvery-white figure the boy once saw through the cabin windows, late at night… So, one night, he decides to leave the cabin and go look for that person in the sinister woods…

In all honestly, it was a very childish story, one that was to be expected from Takao who did have a wild imagination but not a particularly mature one. He kept coming up with new twists to the story, new thrilling situations where this boy – whom he occasionally called ‘I’ by accident, which made this story even less credible than it already was – and it kept going on and on for a while, and there was something about trolls and water spirits and a demon living in the forest and all sorts of nonsense, even a fairy and whatnot.

But despite all that childishness, Takao was talented enough a storyteller that Rei couldn’t deny it being a captivating tale, even scary at times. And it was so very obvious from the beginning that the boy was chasing after a ghost but never realized it himself. The bit about a demon following him across the forest was positively terrifying; Rei felt that spasm-like grip of deeply unsettling fear latch into his spine, crawl up his back one bone at a time, his heart beating in a nervous rhythm…

It shouldn’t have been that scary. Rei could tell nobody else present was this scared. But he couldn’t help it.

Takao had been totally immersed in his own story himself, and when it was time to put an end to it, after the boy had found the ghost and discovered that it was someone who’d been killed long ago, he seemed to be at a loss as for how to _end_ the story. So he gave it a vague sort of finale where it all might just have been the boy’s dream.

“The end,” he then said, obviously a bit dissatisfied himself with this conclusion.

“Bravo, bravo!” cheered Max, completely disregarding the lackluster ending, and clapped his hands in excitement. “What a cool story! It had so many exciting parts! Oh, that thing about the demon was so cool… I can’t believe it… You should write a book, Takao!”

“You think?” Takao asked and scratched his nose, with that awkward, flustered expression he made when he was confused about someone genuinely complimenting him.

“Well, it was pretty fun,” Hiromi admitted. “You do come up with some interesting things.” This much she was willing to compliment Takao, apparently.

“But it was kind of cute, too,” said Rei, after seizing control of his nerves again, and doing his best to hide how scared he had actually been by such a harmless story. “Like a fairytale. There was a fairy in it too, after all.”

“Aren’t fairies _girly girl stuff_ , Takao?” mocked Hiromi, obviously savouring Rei’s comment which was meant to be nothing but positive.

“Bleh! That part was a total failure,” Takao then spat in reply, horrified that his ghost story had accidentally turned out ‘cute’. “Okay, I’ll think of a better one, someone else take it for now.”

“With pleasure,” Max said and took the baton – the flashlight, in other words – from Takao.

Max was sitting opposite Rei, who only just now realized how heavily the night had fallen upon them, and how dark it was outside this little circle of flickering candles, and that narrow passage of light that Max now shone to his own chin for the dramatic effect. Max, who usually had such an adorably sheepish countenance, suddenly made an absolutely ghastly expression that Rei had never seen him wear before; the flashlight that he was holding only enhanced the nearly sickening look on his face.

_Ah…_ There was a sudden, even violent change in the atmosphere. And it was carried out by Max alone. It was a side of his friend that Rei had never seen before – and as he became ever more aware of the cold grasp of the dark summer night on his skin, and the rustle of what might or might not have been the wind in the trees that surrounded them from all sides, Rei couldn’t tear his eyes away from Max’s disturbing face as he began telling a story.

It was a truly bizarre one. Max’s story was about a boy who had been in a traffic accident, and began to see strange hallucinations due to a head injury. A long while after recovering from the accident, the boy once again starts hearing footsteps follow him on his way home from school…

The unnerving manner in which Max slowly narrated his story was both magnificent and absolutely sinister. It wasn’t as long as Takao’s had been, but he dragged it on with ominous pauses that forced Rei to instead listen to the alarmed beat of his own pulse in his ears. His hands felt ever so stickier, stickier, it was disgusting, the cold sweat on his sticky skin,

aah, the boy was being followed by a youkai, he had done a contract with a youkai without thinking, a youkai that had been following his every move ever since, waiting,

and at the end of the story –

Everyone in their small circle was left a bit speechless by the way Max finished his story. Hiromi had lifted a hand to her mouth, the look in her eyes a mixture of fascination and utter disgust. Rei was rather sure that he wasn’t the only one thinking that he could have lived without hearing the gruesome ending…

The poor boy in the story… met such a brutal end.

As soon as Max pointed the flashlight elsewhere, that sinister version of him that they all had been captivated by was suddenly gone, the illusion broken, and in front of them was the same old Mizuhara Max with his usual dorky smile that they all knew so well. It was as if Max himself had been a possessed by a youkai for a moment.

Or the demon out of Takao’s fairytale…

“Shit!” was Takao’s comment, the one that finally broke the strange silence that had trailed for a moment. “That was the real deal, I had no idea you knew how to scare people shitless, Max!”

Max shrugged, feigning his usual angelic innocence; Rei knew for a fact now that he was feigning it to the core. “I’ve always liked Japanese ghost stories.”

Rei was offered the flashlight next but he declined, not only being rather bad at telling stories, but still shaken to the point that he simply couldn’t think of anything, nor really talk. And yet, he couldn’t make himself leave the circle. It was simply too humiliating to him, when his three friends were this into the whole ghost story session.

And, in some wicked way, he was enjoying the thrill as well – which was probably the very reason why humans had been coming up with these skewed stories since ages past. Maybe he could learn to even like this sort of thing.

Takao and Hiromi each told a couple more stories. They were more traditional ghost stories, and still rather creepy, but after having been so thoroughly unnerved by Max, they didn’t quite have the same effect on Rei. The two also seemed to have made it into a competition of which can come up with something scarier, which in turn actually made their stories less scary.

The remaining stories dragged on for so long again that by the time they had both finished, everyone was getting tired. So they decided to call it a day and put an end to the session.

“It’s kinda hard to come up with scary stuff,” Takao, not quite content with his own performance, said as they began cleaning up the patio. “You should teach me, Max.”

“I think you are a better storyteller than me, but we could write a reaaally creepy one together for next time!”

“Oh shit, let’s do it!”

“I’m not gonna lose to you!” announced Hiromi, ready to immerse herself in coming up with even scarier stories.

They were all so pumped about it… and Rei was mostly just happy that it was over. When nobody was looking – or he was pretty sure that nobody was, anyway – he heaved a deep sigh, and quickly made his way inside the dojo. He’d had enough thrills for one night…

And yet…

And yet, once they all had changed to pajamas, and picked their beds from the pile of futons prepared in the dojo, and set themselves comfortably on the floor and turned the lights off…

Rei couldn’t shake it off. That unsettling feeling that the youkai story had planted in him. Like a plant, it had taken root in his heart, and once the lights were off and a heavy silence fell over the dojo, it began reaching out its vines, further and further, and took hold over Rei, who now stared into the impenetrable darkness, unable to relax one bit as all of his senses tingled with fear.

It was such a naïve emotion, and it took him back to his childhood, to those sleepless nights of being scared of all sorts of stupid things only to laugh it off in the morning. But as long as he felt as if being swallowed whole by the oppressive night, it all felt terribly real, and big, and unbearable.

At such times in his childhood, he had sought comfort from whomever of his fellow clan members had been the closest by, but of course, they were thousands of miles away now. Well… he did have friends present here as well… but them not being his family… it was a rather embarrassing idea. Going to one of his teammates because he was still scared… He couldn’t possibly do something so silly.

So Rei didn’t. He curled into a ball inside his futon and wished for it to go away.

But, alas, he wasn’t the only one still awake in the room, nor the only one with keen senses.

After a while, a while that felt like an eternity to Rei who was too strained to even consider actually sleeping, he suddenly heard something.

A new rush of adrenaline coursed through him, turning his limbs numb, the muscles in his back tense – _what was that what was that why is something moving in here, oh my god oh my god oh my god_ – and then, something was moving closer across the tatami floor, oh my god something was dragging itself across the floor and it was getting really close, really close –

He could feel it almost touch the hair on his neck now –

“Rei,” Max whispered behind his shoulder, “you’re awake, right?”

Rei turned over in a heartbeat, a beat that completely burst the balloon of those pent-up feelings that his mind was playing games with. Still alarmed for a few more seconds of fiercely blinking his eyes, he soon realized the silliness of the demons of his own imagination. Max, whose futon was placed closest to Rei’s, had crawled over across the floor to talk to him.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Rei whispered in reply, a little breathless.

“Sorry,” Max whispered back, “but I can’t sleep either. And all your tossing and turning and fidgeting here is kinda bothersome.”

“S-sorry.” It was Rei’s turn to apologize; having been so immersed in his own agitation, he hadn’t even considered it was actually noticeable to others in the dojo’s quiet darkness. This threw all the caution he’d taken in hiding his fears out of the window.

Well, in fact, it had been completely useless under Max’s observant eyes in the first place.

“Would you feel better if I moved my futon next to yours?” Max then asked.

Rei hadn’t been expecting to actually be offered that, since it had always been himself who had sought the comfort of someone else in situations like this. As soon as Rei realized the situation, he felt a warm wave of gratitude toward his friend replace the mind-numbing fear, and it eased his nerves at once. He consented to the suggestion with a smile of relief.

A minute later Max had lugged his futon over and the two lay down side to side, reminiscent of the times they had shared a bed during their travels in the world championships. It felt like such a long time ago now… Rei had always enjoyed it, staying up late while chatting about all sorts of things without care. Remembering those times, which he hadn’t thought about in so long, filled his heart with fondness for his friend. It had been a while since they’d done anything like that together.

“You should just have said something,” Max then whispered, “if you didn’t want to hear the stories. We wouldn’t judge you for it, you know!”

“Yeah, it was pretty silly of me,” Rei admitted. But it was easy saying so afterwards.

“I could see how uncomfortable you were back there, but since you didn’t say anything…”

Hearing that Max had noticed his anxiety was both embarrassing and reassuring to Rei… but, in this situation now, mostly reassuring. It felt nice having another person close. Really, so nice indeed.

Rei found himself moving a bit closer to Max, to the edge of his own futon bed.

“There, there,” Max whispered playfully and stuck a hand out, giving Rei’s head a gentle pat. Then he moved some of Rei’s long hair out of his face. “It’s alright, all is fine now.”

“I know. We’ve been here a hundred times – it was so silly of me to get scared by some fairytales.” Rei had closed his eyes, and was so thoroughly relaxed by Max’s soft touch now, he felt as if he could just go and fall asleep right there and then; on the other hand, he wouldn’t have minded staying awake like this, with Max gently stroking his hair… for just a while longer…

“Mm-hmm,” Max simply hummed in response, neither agreeing or disagreeing with it being silly.

“But still… your story was pretty amazing.” Rationally thinking, now that all the tension was gone from his body and mind, Rei could also acknowledge the art of actually telling such a tale. He wasn’t particularly imaginative himself, so he could never be so convincing, or invent something like that in the first place.

“How did you come up with that?” he decided to ask. “Is it from some book?”

“Well…

You see…

Actually…”

Max had begun,

but then there was a pause.

For a moment, Rei thought that Max was either trying to remember it himself, or was perhaps contemplating whether he wanted to spoil where the story came from or not…

But the pause dragged on for a bit too long,

and Rei could no longer feel Max’s hand on his hair either. So after a while,

he opened his eyes.

Max, with his face only inches away from Rei’s, was staring at him, his own eyes wide open – his expression nonsensical, somehow – distorted, off balance, it was – exactly the way he had looked as he had told the story, with the flashlight casting eerie shadows on his face, only now it was dark, completely dark around them, and the only thing Rei could see was that strange look in Max’s eyes, as if he was – what? What was the word that came to Rei’s mind just then?

_Inhuman_. That look was like something out of this world.

“Actually,” Max finally continued, without batting an eye, “the boy in that story – it was me.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> "misi did you just write a fic about your other fics" I SURE DID


End file.
